1. Technical Field
The present subject matter relates to home automation networking. It further relates to the monitoring and reporting by networked devices of their power or energy usage.
2. Description of Related Art
Providing home automation functionality using networking means is well known in the art. Control of lighting and appliances can be accomplished using systems from many different companies such as X10, Insteon® and Echelon.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,528,954, inventors Lys and Mueller describe a smart light bulb which may include a housing, an illumination source, disposed in the housing, and a processor, disposed in the housing, for controlling the illumination source. The housing may be configured to fit a conventional light fixture. The illumination source may be an LED system or other illumination source. The processor may control the intensity or the color of the illumination source. The housing may also house a transmitter and/or receiver. The smart light bulb may respond to a signal from another device or send a signal to another device. The other device may be another smart light bulb or another device. They go on to describe a modular LED unit which may be designed to be either a “smart” or “dumb” unit. A smart unit, in one embodiment, includes a microprocessor incorporated therein for controlling, for example, a desired illumination effect produced by the LEDs. The smart units may communicate with one another and/or with a master controller by way of a network formed through the mechanism for electrical connection described above. It should be appreciated that a smart unit can operate in a stand-alone mode, and, if necessary, one smart unit may act as a master controller for other modular LED units. A dumb unit, on the other hand, does not include a microprocessor and cannot communicate with other LED units. As a result, a dumb unit cannot operate in a stand-alone mode and requires a separate master controller. The smart light bulb may be associated with a wide variety of illumination applications and environments.
Ducharme et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 7,014,336, describe systems and methods for generating and/or modulating illumination conditions to generate high-quality light of a desired and controllable color, for creating lighting fixtures for producing light in desirable and reproducible colors, and for modifying the color temperature or color shade of light within a prespecified range after a lighting fixture is constructed. In one embodiment, LED lighting units capable of generating light of a range of colors are used to provide light or supplement ambient light to afford lighting conditions suitable for a wide range of applications. They go on to describe a networked lighting system. U.S. Pat. No. 7,651,245 invented by Thomas, et al., shows an LED light fixture with internal power supply. They describe some embodiments where a radio frequency control unit can receive commands from a centralized controller, such as that provided by a local network, or from another control module positioned in a fixture in close proximity. Thus, the range of the lighting network could be extended via the relaying and/or repeating of control commands between control units.
Neither Lys and Mueller, Ducharme et al. nor Thomas, et al. discuss monitoring or reporting the power consumed in their smart light bulb.
Inventors Chemel et al. show a method and system for designing improved intelligent, LED-based lighting systems. The LED based lighting systems may include fixtures with one or more of rotatable LED light bars, integrated sensors, onboard intelligence to receive signals from the LED light bars and control the LED light bars, and a mesh network connectivity to other fixtures. In at least one embodiment, light fixtures or associated control systems may measure the electricity they've consumed, and report it back to a utility for billing purposes. In another embodiment, the operator user interface may be adapted to provide an operator of the environment with tools for visualizing the energy consumed by at least one of the lighting systems.
The system described by Chemel et al. requires expensive sensors to measure the electricity that has been consumed. Measuring the energy consumed and reporting it to the user or home owner is becoming more important over time as more and more people want to make their lifestyle more “green” and carefully monitor and control their energy usage. At the same time, home automation is becoming more prevalent and easier to use. Devices enabled for home automation include control and communication means allowing the devices to include more functionality. So it is becoming very important to enable devices to report their own energy usage as accurately as possible while adding as little cost as possible to individual devices or to the home in general.